GCC Field Work: Nicaragua
Once again I have been
fortunate enough to travel, and this time it was to Nicaragua for the fieldwork
portion of the online Global Competency Certificate (GCC) program that I am
enrolled in. There were two purposes for myself, five other GCC participants
(Chris, Ben, Diana, Marci, and Amy - also secondary school teachers), and our supervisor, Sandra, from Teachers
College, Columbia, in coming down to Nicaragua. The first was general – to deepen
our understanding of global competency. The second was specific - to work with
a semi-private school called Hermana Maura Clarke. Hermana Maura Clarke is a primary school
in the morning and secondary school in the afternoon. Our work description
comprised of giving workshops to the Hermana Maura Clarke teachers on topics
such as how to create dynamic classrooms, handle classroom misconduct, and
other teacher-related matters. We were also to work with the school on raising
awareness regarding littering and how to foster a sense of environmental
stewardship of their school and local community. Of course in addition to them
learning from us, we planned on learning from them, thus creating a reciprocal
relationship.
Day 1: Saturday (7/9/2016)
After a tiring bout of bus
and air travel to Managua, and finally meeting each other face-to-face after
having taken online classes for nearly a year together, we spent our first full
day’s morning at a hotel hearing from two Nicaraguan representatives about how
things are in Nicaragua with regard to education and the environment. Both
representatives worked at the administrative level of their respective fields
and were interesting people themselves. The education representative had already
lived in Spain and hoped to move to Sweden to earn her doctorate in the field
of education. The environmental rep. told us stories of how she would work with
schools to host environmental awareness fairs
(art made from used car tires that might be seen as school environmental awareness fair)
(more tire art)
as well as hold community forums
about being vigilant against littering in their neighborhoods. These efforts
are so important, especially in Central America, where you constantly see
litter being thrown out of car windows and garbage being burned on the side of
the road.
After the two talks it was
high time to get out of that hotel, stretch our legs, and see Managua, the
capital of Nicaragua. Here’s the Palacio Nacional, which is where the
Somoza government ruled from during the years 1936-1979. The Somoza government
was in power until the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), started by
Carlos Fonseca (right poster) overthrew it in a bloody revolutionary war from
1979-1990. The FSLN was named in honor of the man on small left poster, Augusto
Sandino, who led an earlier rebellion from 1927-1933 against the US military
which was occupying Nicaragua at the time. It is worth pointing out that even
after Sandino got the US military to withdraw from Nicaragua in 1933, the US
backed the oppressive Somoza government in Nicaragua during its reign from 1936
until 1979.
Not completely sure of how
welcome we Americans were in the Nicaragua after getting this brief history
lesson, the host-dad of one of our homestays, Don Pedro, later explained that
he (and presumably many Nicaraguans) were not fans of the US government but had
no hard feelings against US citizens, realizing that there is a difference
between the two. I breathed a little easier after hearing that.
(our GCC group in front of old cathedral in Managua)
Next to the Palacio Nacional
is a beautiful and very old cathedral that has not been used since the 1972
earthquake that rocked much of Managua. This photo of us trying to figure out
how to align ourselves for the picture seems representative of the turbulent
times Nicaragua must have been having during the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s due to
the earthquake and revolutionary war.
Following our tour of central
Managua we drove to Ciudad Sandino, a suburb of the capital, where we were
dropped off at our homestays where Chris, Ben, and I would be living
with our family for the fourteen days. We stayed with a family of four – Jose
(father), Laura (mother), Ashley (daughter in seventh grade), and Stewell (son
in third grade)
Our host family was great.
They prepared excellent food and were very willing to have conversations with
us about anything, even more sensitive subjects like how Nicaraguans felt about
receiving so much aid from foreign countries. Stevell and Ashley were also fun
to play games with and practice their English with.
(Ben, Stevell, Ashley, and me playing Set while at our homestay)
Day 2: Sunday (7/10/16)
We had a great second day in
Nicaragua getting to better know the areas of Masaya, Managua, and Ciudad
Sandino. We visited Mirador Catarina, which has a beautiful overlook over
Laguna de Apoyo. This is coincidentally where myself and several friends
traveled to last year while in Nicaragua. We also visited other places with
great views such as La Loma de Tiscapa, where the presidential palace
used to be and overlooks all of Managua. We visited Coyotepe, which was a prison
for political dissidents to the Somosa government for decades. Hearing about
how political dissidents were held captive, tortured, and killed in this place
for years was a sobering experience.
(our GCC group at El Mirador Catarina in front of Laguna de Apoyo)
On a lighter note we also
visited the beautiful town of Masaya, which is full of flowers and artisanal
crafts. We watched Portugal win the Euro Cup finals and drank delicious battidos
(smoothies) in Masaya’s main park. I highly recommend them if you’re ever
in Masaya.
(Chris with a battido)
That evening back in Ciudad
Sandino we went for a long walk with our host family around the neighborhood,
which we were advised not to have done by ourselves for safety concerns. It was
an awakening experience for us to feel somewhat trapped in our homestays due to
the unwanted attention we would receive, being gringos, if we ventured out on
our own. This was not easy to live with for those of us unwilling to risk the
streets unaccompanied.
Now that we were slightly
more accustomed to the area, the heat, people and food, our next day was to go
to Hermana Maura Clarke and meet the teachers, administrators, and students
we’d be working with.
Day 3: Monday (7/11/16)
Day 3 was a good, although it
didn’t start out so. In the morning I went for a run. Yes, I chanced going on
into town on my own recognizing how privileged I am being a large, athletic
looking male who less people would be inclined to mess with. But it wasn’t the
cat-callers and annoying loudmouths that caused me problems that morning.
Halfway through my run I was caught in torrential downpour, and then got lost,
only to happen upon Laura’s (my host-mom) work at the fire department, where
she luckily was working at the time. She walked me, a half-drowned gringo-rat
back to our homestay. So much for being strong and independent!
After drying off and having breakfast
we went Hermana Maura Clarke and spent the morning being introduced to the
primary school teachers and receiving a tour of their rooms. In the afternoon
we met with the secondary school teachers and had a conversation with them
about the areas that they find challenging about being teachers. This
interesting conversation brought to light the fact that we (Nicaraguan and US
teachers) deal with many of the same problems in the classroom – cell phones being
a distraction, a lack of motivation to learn, and some students being “fresh”
with teachers as one Nicaraguan teacher put it.
(discussion with Nicaraguan teachers at the Hermana Maura Clarke school)
As mentioned we planned on
having workshops with these teachers about strategies for creating dynamic
classrooms and dealing successfully with misbehavior and group management. We
also noted amongst ourselves that there were many things we didn’t understand
about the Nicaraguan education system and the culture around education that
were making these teachers’ realities what it was.
This realization forced us to
ask bigger questions about the Nicaraguan education system and culture, as well
as reflect on what we take for granted in the US. These bigger questions
included ones like “What motivation do students have for doing well in their
primary and secondary schooling?” and “What percentage of people go to college
and why/why not?” and “Does having a college degree actually equate to having
an improved quality of life?” In the next two weeks we would learn some of the
answers to these questions.
Day 4: Tuesday (7/12/2016)
Day 4 was a day of work,
learning, and effort. I got up and went for a run and didn’t get lost this
time! Shortly after the other teachers and I found ourselves at Hermana Maura
Clarke again and decided to observe the primary students’ classes in the
morning and the secondary students’ classes in the afternoon. It was
enlightening to do this and see the current teaching strategies that those
teachers employ as well as where there were areas of potential to tap into. We
spent a lot of time debriefing our observations afterwards. On a lighter note,
while visiting classrooms, we were often the center of attention especially in
the English classes when the students wanted to practice their English: “Hello.
My name is ____. I am ____ years old. My favorite color is _____.”
Day 5 – 7: Wednesday –
Friday (7/13-7/15)
The next few days were busy and
productive. I mentioned that one of the reasons we came down to Nicaragua and
Maura Clarke was to give professional development workshops to their teachers. After
getting to know the school on Monday and Tuesday we spent all of Wednesday
using the Design Process (the same one that I use in my Intro. to Engineering
class!) to prepare the specifics of the workshops we would give. This design
process was well … quite a process. It entailed putting our six minds together to
decide on what to talk about while taking into account what they asked for,
what we observed in their classes, and what we generally thought was important
for teachers to know to have a successful classroom.
(GCC group preparing for teacher workshops)
(the beginning of the Design Process)
Eventually we finished
Wednesday after a full day of solid planning with six workshops prepared: Actividades
Dinamicas (Dynamic Activities), Control y Manejo de la Aula (Control
and Management of the Classroom), Antes-Durante-Despues (Before-During-After
… referring to warm up, main, and closure activities one might do in the
classroom), Amistad y Compañrerismo (Relationships), Motivacion y
Metas (Motivation and Goals), and finally Desarrollo Profesional
(Professional Development).
We were to give these six
workshops over two days (Thursday and Friday) in the morning for three hours to
the primary school teachers and repeat in the afternoon for three hours to the
secondary school teachers. The six of us broke up into pairs and each led two
of these workshops.
(Friday's workshop schedule)
These workshops were a great
experience for me, my five American compañeros, and for the Nicaraguan
teachers. They seemed genuinely appreciative to hear about and participate in
the different activities we had planned for them. We had some great
conversations on topics such as classroom management strategies, motivation
& goals, and building healthy relationships with students. We hired a local
Nicaraguan translator, Stephan, to translate. It was funny how some of the
educational buzz words we use in English translated into Spanish such as
“talking piece” becoming pelota hablante, “think, pair, share” becoming uno,
dos, todos, and “growth mindset” became mentalidad en desarrollo. We
laughed to ourselves as we observed how closely the primary teachers behaved
like their students (quiet and attentive), while the secondary teachers behaved
like theirs (side conversations, sly comments, and always looking for a way to
get a joke in i.e. being “fresh.”). It was all good though, as we laughed and
learned about each other’s approach to teaching.
(Amy and I giving a workshop with Stephen translating)
(Nicaraguan teachers during workshop)
On Friday night we went out
for a well-deserved cervesa (beer) near
the plaza central of Ciudad Sandino, where we debriefed and gave
appreciation to each other for how we supported and collaborated with each
other over the past three days. The next day we would be off to a well-deserved
weekend vacation in the popular tourist and surf region of Nicaragua - San Juan
del Sur. ¡Hasta Luego Ciudad Sandino!
Day 8 – 10: Saturday –
Monday (7/16-7/18)
The next few days came with
wonderful ups and less than wonderful downs. The ups consisted of taking a much
needed mini-vacation from our work here in Ciudad Sandino. Then there was the
wonderful air conditioning in our hotel! This truly means a lot when you’ve
been sleeping a corrugated metal roofed annex at your host family’s home with
only a floor fan to cool you off during some very warm nights. Other ups
included freely walking through town with all the other gringos visiting San
Juan, getting lunch at a restaurant on the beach, and then going to toss a Frisbee
(one of the teachers, Ben, is an ultimate Frisbee player back in New York),
play in the waves, and enjoy the beautiful sunset on that beach. That night
most of us went out on the town to enjoy the nightlife, which there was plenty
of.
(sunset at San Juan del Sur)
The next day, Sunday, was
even better, though, despite the fact that I was suffering the consequences of
partaking of too much Flor de Caña, the national rum of Nicaragua. No
matter! The surf conditions were great and I had found a surf shop that was
shuttling people from San Juan del Sur to a good break just north called Playa
Remanso.
Two FSD interns (the
Foundation for Sustainable Development is the partner organization that our GCC
group was working with in Nicaragua), Thomas and Jose, had never surfed before
and so wanted to join me to give it a shot. The conditions couldn’t have been better.
Perfectly peeling three-foot waves with comfortable water temperature, and if
you stayed out long enough, after the morning crowd had gone in, there were
only a few of us out there to aprovechar las olajes (take advantage of
the waves). Jose stood up, Thomas got wiped out by a big rouge wave but lived
to tell the tale, and I got some of the best waves of my life. I surfed so much
that my ribs were sore to the touch for two days afterwards from laying stomach
down on my board.
(Chris and I relaxing at Playa Remanso)
On Monday, after our fun
weekend in San Juan del Sur, we teachers gave a workshop to the fourth and
fifth year high school students (their system is a little different than ours
in the USA), who have to conduct and defend a research topic before being able
to graduate. The workshop was on doing good research: finding credible sources,
citing bibliographies correctly, differentiating between primary vs secondary
sources, etc. It was the first time we had worked with the students directly
and it was really nice to do so. They were very interested in learning about
us, knowing why we were there, and telling us about themselves and their
school.
(GCC teachers with Hermana Maura Clarke students)
On Tuesday we headed out to
see more of Nicaragua because it was a national holiday – their annual
celebration of the end of their 1980/90’s revolutionary war. We went to Masaya
again and then Granada.
Day 11 – 12: Tuesday –
Wednesday (7/19-7/20)
We visited the market in
Masaya, where I spent nearly all the money I brought down for souvenirs on
chocolate and coffee for friends and family back home. ¿Cuanto cuesta por
todo de su café? (How much for all of your coffee?) Then we visited the
colonial city of Granada and Las Isletas (the islands) just off-shore in Lake
Nicaragua. You can actually buy some of these islands! Except the island with
monkeys on it; you can’t buy that one. But you can visit pull up close enough
to it so that a monkey, named Michael Jackson according to our boat guide,
might board your boat and sit on your shoulder. After monkeying around at Las
Isletas we had dinner at a restaurant near the foot of Volcan Masaya, which was
glowing red in the darkness of night. Mt. Doom might be in Mordor but Tolkien
didn’t know there is also one in Nicaragua!
(monkey on boat)
Nicaragua, and all of Central
America I’ve come to find, is a funny place in that work and school tends to
get canceled fairly frequently. Sometimes it is a golpe del estado (coup
d’etat), sometimes it’s because the electricity or water shuts off, or
sometimes it is because the president decides that since Tuesday is a holiday
and people would like be tired from celebrating that day, we might as well take
Wednesday off too. And that’s what happened. Nicaragua took Wednesday off in
addition to Tuesday. We GCC participants, however, decided to work.
(working on packet while rest of country takes day off)
We spend much of Wednesday
morning working on a packet that summarized the workshops that we led last week
with the teachers. We also met Devin, the director FSD’s Latin America area.
Finally, we ended the day by swimming in Laguna Xiloa, which is a lake in the
crater of an extinct volcano just outside of Managua. We were only three more
days away from leaving and so I was trying to aprovechar (take
advantage) of my time and opportunities to interact with the people in
Nicaragua to learn about the education system there – more than what I might be
able to learn online or from books at home. One thing that I learned and realized
this day, and this holds for the USA also, is that education does not
necessarily equal success (economically, personally, politically, etc). After a
conversation with our host father while eating our evening meal supported this
statement. He told us how in addition to being a lawyer (a profession requiring
education) he also buys and sells clothes from the USA, buys and sells
appliances from abandoned houses in Ciudad Sandino, and grows fruit on a property
he bought near Laguna de Apoyo, which he then sells on the streets here in Ciudad
Sandino. As Jose, our host father’s, story suggests, it seems that economic
riches are more closely linked with one’s ability to enterprise, see economic
opportunities in everyday life, and have an entrepreneurial spirit than only
based on one’s education.
(Kelly, our incredible in-country host from FSD, who answered many of our questions about life and culture in Nicaragua)
After coming to this new
realization I was tired, and with my two compadres – Ben and Chris – playing
ukuleles in the back courtyard of our homestay under the night sky, I decided
to join them for a little jam session and practice for our upcoming show! Buenas
noches (good night).
Day 13 – 14: Thursday –
Friday (7/21-7/22)
Thursday and Friday were wonderful.
On Friday we had the chance to visit a public school, Colegio Publico
Augosto Sandino, where we walked around the campus and observed some
classes for primary school in the morning and secondary school the afternoon.
It was chaotic in the morning with the primary school where some classrooms had
teachers in them, while others didn’t. The students, however, were learning
things that students in more controlled learning environments, like here in the
US, don’t necessarily have to, such as how to take care of one another amidst
the chaos or how to learn using mostly their visual skills due to the hopeless
amount of noise. (I swear those kids could read lips because they were
following instructions that I couldn’t hear for the life of me.) There were
also a number of heroic teachers, particularly in the secondary school, that,
despite the noise and lack of focus in the halls and surrounding classrooms,
were valiantly teaching and engaging their classes. How does the saying go?
“Happiness is not about having perfect weather, but rather learning to dance in
the rain.”
(outside public school in Ciudad Sandino)
(cool art mural at public school of Augosto Sandino - a national figure)
(Ben, Diana, and Chris with students of public school)
Thursday, was a long work
day, with us GCC participants finishing the workshop manual for the teachers of
Hermana Maura Clarke. We also took on some campus improvement projects with the
5th year students, such as painting garbage and recycling barrels,
and planting trees and plants around campus. We had fun doing this alongside
their students while they asked us questions like “What does ‘awesome’ mean in
English?” (it means tuani in Nicaraguan Spanish!)
(Ben planting plants with student)
On Friday we returned to Hermana
Maura Clarke, to celebrate Dia de los Estudiantes (Day of the Students).
At the Dia de los Estudiantes celebration in their auditorium there
were skits, songs, a band, and dancing put on by the teachers all in honor of
the students. We GCC participants even got up and sang Bob Marley’s “Three
Little Birds” for them.
(Hermana Maura Clarke teachers giving performance at Dia de los Estudiantes)
After the students left for
the day the teachers of Hermana Maura Clarke gave us a heartfelt good-bye
complete with food, presents, and speeches of gratitude and parting. If that
wasn’t enough to make us feel loved and appreciated, we then had another despedida
(going away party) with our host families. We ate at delicious dinner, which
included pollo asado (grilled chicken), good conversations, music, and
again speeches of gratitude and parting.
On Saturday, our last full
day in Nicaragua, I finally got my haircut (a tradition I like to do while in
Latin America) and we packed our bags for the next day’s early morning flights
home. We played a few more rounds of “Set” with our host family kids: Stewell
and Ashley, who have not only grown to like the game but also get pretty good
at it. We no longer have to let them win to be nice!
(Ben and I playing a few more rounds of Set with Stevell before flying home)
Day 15 – 16: Saturday – Sunday
(7/23-7/24)
During our final reflection,
which we had been doing most nights, on the malecón (pier/boardwalk) of Managua – Sandra led us through some thought-provoking
questions like “What was frustrating?” “How has our work tied into promoting
global competency?” and “How will we proceed in the coming months upon our
return home?” It was a good reflection.
(malecón of Managua)
After this reflection though,
a funny coincidence of events found us at a restaurant where one of the
Nicaraguan teachers from Hermana Maura Clark and his band were playing. They
were great, but even better was when they took an intermission and asked us if
we wanted to play some music, having seen us perform “Three Little Birds” at
the Dia de los Estudiantes the day before. We (ok, I) jumped at the
opportunity and managed to get Ben and Chris up there too. We covered Bob
Marley’s Redemption Song and Tom Petty’s Free Falling to a
half-filled bar of Nicaraguans and our own little GCC fan club. Ben, who
played base, later told me that he is now afraid to hang out with me because he
doesn’t know what situations he might find himself in. I find this not only
humorous but representative of life – keep saying yes and being open to life
and you might find yourself doing things you never expected you’d be doing ….
and maybe even having some fun in the meantime.
(we three gringos playing music in a bar in Managua)
The goodbyes to many people
were hard and quick. Although going into this trip I felt like it would be
somewhat routine given that it was not my first time doing educational work in
Central America, it was anything from it. I am truly sad to be parting ways
with my newly-made Nicaraguan and GCC family and I am reinvigorated for the
coming school year.
(GCC team with students from Hermana Maura Clarke)
On the plane going home from
Houston to San Francisco after getting up at 4:00 a.m. I began noticing the
little things of what it means to be back in the USA – being able flush down
toilet paper into the sewer, signs being in English, having potable drinking
water coming from fountains, white people everywhere, different food options, and
a drastically different landscape looking out from my airplane window seat. Nicaragua
is known as the land of lakes and volcanos and is a lush, green, undulating, largely
unkept landscape. The US (at least the agricultural area just outside of
Houston) is a vast well-organized farmland. This might be unfair, but the differences
in landscapes really said something about the differences between our countries
– how one is considered a developed country while the other undeveloped.
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This
blog entry is not only a summary of my time in Nicaragua this summer, but is
also doubling as a reflection assignment for my GCC program. This reflection
assignment entails that I “reflect and then produce a product that
explains how the experience deepened your understanding of your personal global
competence.” I will attempt to do so below in blue.
The sixth core concepts
of global competence matrix listed above is The discourse around human rights and social
development is a response to local instances and global patterns of injustice
and inequality.
Three
phrases jump out at me from this concept: “social development” “response” and
“injustice and inequality.” What jumps out at me about social development was
how many mission or “service” groups were on the plane or in the airport going
down and coming back from Nicaragua. Most of the people in these service groups
were white people like me; many of them wearing matching shirts saying things
like “Nicaragua Gospel Mission Group, Summer 2016.” Although we didn’t have
matching shirts my group was another example of a service group because we also were
going down to aid with social development in Nicaragua - in our case in the area of education. In addition to religion and education there were others going down to
work on water projects or to serve as medical brigades. There was even one
group on our plane coming back to Houston from Nicaragua that cried when we
landed on US soil because they had been going around the world for eleven
months to developing countries promoting the gospel. Why so much aid coming
from a developed country like the USA to developing countries like Nicaragua?
I guess
this is what developed citizens' “response to global inequalities” looks like. It
is encouraging to see so many people taking action to help balance the inequalities
of the world, but ever since I began traveling to developing countries as a
volunteer (seriously beginning back in 2009 when I moved to Honduras for two
years to teach) I have been wondering if service groups, aid groups, mission
groups (call them what you will) were actually ever worthwhile.
Although
the intention is there for many of us "service" people, there are many reasons why actually
going down to serve can prove more detrimental than beneficial. First, there
is the environmental impact of air travel, which is normally required when
traveling to a developing country. Next there is the financial side of things –
how much money was spent on bringing the helpers to the developing country,
housing and feeding them, and all the other costs associated with them being in
country. Could that money have been more wisely spent if it were simply given
to the recipients? Next there is the matter of whether the service group
actually did more damage than good while in the developing country. I’ve heard
stories of service groups building a house only to have the local people tear
it down after they leave and redo it themselves because it wasn’t built properly. I’ll be the first to say that I’ve been in this server position
many times - my first trip actually being a housebuilding trip to Mexico during
the spring break of my junior year in high school.
You
also frequently hear from the helpers after the trip saying that they
benefitted more than the people they served. Now perhaps this is, what I’ll
call, the St. Francis effect (“it is in giving that we receive”) but a more pessimistic view of this might say that the recipients really did get
less out of the exchange. I have heard this enough to begin wondering who are
these trips really for - the people of the developing countries? or a group of
people who want to travel to a foreign country during their vacation to feel
good about themselves and see a new place?
This
GCC trip to Nicaragua was an attempt to see if a service trip could be deemed
worthwhile. This is a hard question to answer and it forces the questioner to
ask how they are measuring the idea of “worthwhile.” If worthwhile is measured
by the physical impact and artifacts that one could touch, see and feel
afterwards, then I would say that our GCC trip to Nicaragua was not worthwhile.
We only planted a dozen or so bushes and trees, painted six or so garbage cans,
left a suitcase full of presents like chocolates and board games for our host
families, and left one workshop manual for the teachers and administrators of Hermana
Maura Clarke.
If we
are measuring worthwhile through a financial lens, we can’t say that we helped
out too much either, although the families that we lived with were surely payed
for the food and lodging they provided us. The nature of our work was also not
spiritual and so we can’t claim any benefit to the Nicaraguans in that regard
either.
But perhaps
we could say that our trip was worthwhile due to the intellectual,
social/emotional, and even inspirational effect it had. We taught roughly ten
hours-worth of teacher training workshops in addition to engaging in side-conversations,
doing classroom observations, and having one-on-one meetings with the faculty and administration of
Hermana Maura Clarke. In the days that followed our workshops we saw at least
some of these techniques, concepts, and ways of thinking being implemented into
several classrooms and therefore hopefully making an improvement on the
education of the Hermana Maura Clarke students.
Also
when we met with the senior class of students for thesis research and campus
improvement projects, many of them took great interest in us being there and
wanted very much to practice their English with us. I believe this was a source
of motivation and inspiration for them to learn English and study harder in
their classes at school. It helped that our interpreter, Stephan, a Nicaraguan,
was present for them to see an example of a Nicaraguan who had achieved a high level
of being bilingual. Finally, there is the emotional connection and friendships
that we made, which is simply not achieved on any comparable level when one is
not physically present face-to-face.
How
significant of an intellectual, inspirational, and emotional impact we had is
hard to measure, but if we nudged a teacher further down the process of
improving their pedagogical practice, inspired a student to study harder to
have a fuller appreciation of languages, or cultivated a host-brother or sister
to have a greater sense of connectedness to people from another country, then
perhaps a trip like ours could be deemed worthwhile. Given that people are
likely to continue doing service trips to developing countries in the
foreseeable future, perhaps a better question is to ask “How can we make the
most of these service trips both for the visiting and host parties?”
An
after-thought: Yes, perhaps the people who go on service trips do receive more
than the people they were intending to serve, but this is not necessarily a bad
thing. What one gains from an interaction is not always at the loss of the
other party involved, i.e. it is not like a balance scale. In fact, what the
initial helper gains from an international experience like this can turn into
more giving further down the road. I will give two examples of this before concluding.
The first example is of a
friend of mine who went down to the Dominican Republic in high school to work with
orphans. Finding a sickly brother and sister locked in a closet by their
desperately poor parents who then abandoned them to die, my friend was so moved
that she went back several more times to the DR during high school. Then in
college she decided to become a pediatric nurse so that one day she could go
back to live with and serve the youth of the DR in a medical capacity. She has just completed one of her two-year
stint in the DR where she has attended to hundreds of kids, trained dozens of
local nurses, and become a role model for other young Americans visiting the DR
like she did when in high school. This example certainly shows the benefit of a worthwhile international service trip.
The
second example comes to me while looking at a picture on my desk next to my
computer. The picture is of a friend of mine and nine students that my friend and I worked together to bring up from Honduras to visit the Bay Area and my current school in Northern California.
The picture shows them jumping on the lawn of the Fort Mason hostel in San
Francisco with Trans America building and the rest of the financial district in
the background. The look on these nine students’ faces and the memories they have from this trip strongly suggest that international service trips are
worthwhile. In 2017 my friend and I plan on bringing another group of students
up from Honduras to visit. In
the preparation, during, and after this trip I will be asking myself “How can we
make this trip as worthwhile as possible?”
